Coming To Mac
A First-year Student's Perspective
By Ron Levitin

Are you a new first year student coming to Mac in September? Do you sometimes feel like you are caught between the excitement of going to University and the fear of uncertainty?

Well, so do I. As some of you may know, my name is Ron Levitin and I'm an incoming first year student going to the Faculty of Sciences. This is my story on what coming to Mac has been like for me (so far, anyway...).

As of May 26th, 2007, just two days before the OUAC deadline, I still had no idea where I wanted to go for University. I live in Toronto and had applied to 4 universities. I applied to both U of T and York, because of my mom (She was obviously hoping I'd stay close to home), as well as Western and McMaster. When it came down to it, my choice was really between Western and McMaster. As I'm sure many will agree, the choice of University to attend is one of those cross-roads in life where any choice you make will lead you down very different paths.

I had already visited both campuses and they are both small and beautiful. Both Universities have a stupendous reputation (Western leaning a tad on the partying side, Mac more towards the academics), and a LOT of my friends chose to go to Western, while not so many even applied to McMaster. It was a tough choice, but when it came down to it I (obviously) chose Mac. The biggest draw was the friendly, helpful, community feeling I noticed at Mac that was simply lacking at any of the other Universities.

Upon accepting the McMaster offer on OUAC, I knew I'd made the right choice. I quickly applied for Residence and submitted it before the deadline, then set out to learn as much as possible about my future home.

The first place I went was Facebook, where I quickly joined all the McMaster groups I could find, and found that I really was not alone in many of the questions, concerns, and thoughts that I had. I decided that since few people seemed to know answers, the next best place to go was the Mac Website, where I found lots of information about the remaining steps in the registration process and the events that are going on @ Mac during the summer.

For me, my largest concerns were the living conditions I'd have to put up with, the difficulty of the work, and of course, the *very slight* possibility of not being able to make any friends and end up having a miserable year.

Through the internet, however, most of my concerns have been relieved. I managed to meet plenty of amazing people going to Mac next year through Facebook, I found out about MacInsiders (which is a great source of info), and I have been assured that life in residence at mac is all about what the people in my res make of it... as for the work being to hard for me too handle... I'll just have to wait until September to see how that turns out, but in the meantime, I prefer not to think about it